Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions

Warped Passages Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe s Hidden Dimensions The universe has many secrets It may hide additional dimensions of space other than the familier three we recognize There might even be another universe adjacent to ours invisible and unattainable fo

The universe has many secrets It may hide additional dimensions of space other than the familier three we recognize There might even be another universe adjacent to ours, invisible and unattainable for now.Warped Passages is a brilliantly readable and altogether exhilarating journey that tracks the arc of discovery from early twentieth century physics to the razor The universe has many secrets It may hide additional dimensions of space other than the familier three we recognize There might even be another universe adjacent to ours, invisible and unattainable for now.Warped Passages is a brilliantly readable and altogether exhilarating journey that tracks the arc of discovery from early twentieth century physics to the razor s edge of modern scientific theory One of the world s leading theoretical physicists, Lisa Randall provides astonishing scientific possibilities that, until recently, were restricted to the realm of science fiction Unraveling the twisted threads of the most current debates on relativity, quantum mechanics, and gravity, she explores some of the most fundamental questions posed by Nature taking us into the warped, hidden dimensions underpinning the universe we live in, demystifying the science of the myriad worlds that may exist just beyond our own.

One thought on “Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions”

I reviewed this once before and a tecnical snafu ate it when I tried to up load itThis book is dreadful: here are the many reasons why:The material is disorganised. The book is ostensibly about extra spatial dimensions. The concepts are introduced in the first few chapters then don't re-appear until the last few chapters. The Standard Model is introduced twice.The explanations are poor and sometimes wrong. The section on the Pauli Principle is riddled with errors and omissions that should embarr [...]

I was excited to buy this book, and looked forward to learning something useful about new science. But I thought it was horrible. The explanations are unreadable. The preface was even less comprehensible. BTW, I have an engineering degree and was the CEO of a scientific research institute for 14 years. I think I am capable of reading a lay book about science. I got nothing from this one.

this rating is much more a reflection on me than randall's writinge wrote about complex theories in quantum physics and string theory in probably the most accessible manner possible. but my brain isnt great at grasping such notions so that is on me.Randall starts each chapter with a parable fairy story to illustrate the ideas discussed in that chapter and finishes with a bulleted synopsis of what she wrotel in all this is a physics book for non physicists.

A few weeks ago I came across an interesting blurb about Ms. Randall's latest book. Since I was unfamiliar with her or any prior books (one was mentioned in the write up), I did some cursory digging and found that she had written her first book in the mid-2000s. Because I wanted to be "fair" before reading the just-published book, I felt obligated to read the earlier one. Now that was a gigantic mistake! (Not the reading, just the "obligated" part.)"Warped Passages" is a superbly written book by [...]

People make too much of condescension in science writers; I've seen several reviews now praise Randall for not being condescending or patronising, possibly because Randall herself mentions that she wrote the book because so many others struck her as being patronising or condescending and professional reviewers are usually journalists and journalists are lazy hacks.In actual fact, any work of popular science, particularly in the field of physics, is going to be condescending in places by necessit [...]

If you love particle physics you'll probably love this book. The first and last fourths of the book were really interesting and mostly about new theories in particle physics.The middle half of the book slogs through a brief history of particle physics, string theory, and multiple dimensions.She employs a few odd tools. Most chapters begin with an Alice in Wonderland like story that is meant to demonstrate the concept to be discussed. Some readers may find it witty and amusing but I found it dist [...]

Lisa Randall is one of my favorite scientists. Her research is amazing. I highly recommend this book as well as watching her lectures online. The lectures (some 5 hours in length) help solidify the information in this book. I can't wait to see where this research leads. I have always been excited to learn about dimensions. I hope I live long enough to see the how the work of Randall and others affects our understanding or branes and the forces attached to them.

Is gravity weaker than other three forces? A solution to the hierarchy problem in physicsGravity is the weakest forces of all the four forces of our universe, because, according to the author, it is concentrated in another spatial dimension of the universe, and these extra dimensions could be infinitely large. The summary of this book is as follows: We live in a three-dimensional pocket of higher dimensional space, also called branes. It is like a bead on a wire that can only move along one dime [...]

Most of the book is a set up for the last couple chapters, by giving a history and accounting of the Standard Model of Quantum Mechanics and some baseline information on string theory. The last couple chapters deal with theories of extra dimensions and how they might be perceived and detected. Most extra dimensional theories have finite or small scaled that wrap back on themselves. She puts forth a theory of potentially infinite but warped extra dimensions and how those would manifest. Also much [...]

I won't begin to pretend that I completely wrapped my mind around everything in this book. It definitely peaked by curiosity and I am intrigued to learn more, but this is no "particle physics for dummies". Some fascinating concepts contained within. Definitely helped open my eyes to some of the crazier aspects of our world.

The Standard Model of particle physics is the most successful scientific theory ever produced. It's capable of making predictions that turn out to be incredibly accurate, down to many decimal places. It's produced surprising predictions that turn out to be true. The discovery of the Higgs boson a few years ago cemented in the capstone of its success. But it also has a massive, gaping hole in the middle of it, a flaw that has consumed the efforts of several generations of physicists and continues [...]

I really had my hopes up for Warped Passages after reading Brian Greene’s Hidden Reality. Not because I enjoyed that book so much, but because it so thoroughly confused and frustrated me that I just assumed another book would do a better job of explaining the wonderful world of hidden dimensions.Unfortunately, Lisa Randall’s Warped Passages is no better. Just like Hidden Reality, Warped Passages starts out well enough by explaining some basics about quantum physics but then very quickly snow [...]

Through the early pages of the book, Dr. Randall's writing style drove me nearly crazy, but as I continued to read, either she started to get her bearings or else I got more used to it. In any event, I found this a fascinating book. Technically it is very challenging -- I am not going to pretend that I truly grasped most of what she was writing about; however, I was able, at least at some level, to follow the story she was telling, and that was a welcome sort of challenge. I enjoyed this book en [...]

I didn't find this book as irritating as some others around here seem to have found it. I can definitely, however, agree with the most common criticisms. The whole book suffers from a bloat borne of repetition and very odd, distracting analogies. Very, very often the same information is repeated several times, seemingly building to some greater point, only for the chapter to end with a bullet point summary of those same, repeated points. And about those analogies, I cannot recall one of them tha [...]

"Every now and then a man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions." (O.W. Holmes, Sr. 1858)Holmes would, I think, have agreed that this book is a provider of such mind-stretching ideas. Here you'll find an excellent discussion of some of the more radical new ideas from the model-building camp of theoretical physics. Taking ideas of higher dimensions and branes borrowed from string theory, Prof. Randall and co-researchers have produced inter [...]

It can be difficult to try and explain abstract theoretical physics concepts with just analogies and no equations, but Randall does a reasonably good job of describing the main points of interest and research in her field. Some of the analogies miss the mark and the attempted conference-style humor throughout, including the little fictional narrative sections at the start of each chapter, is a little awkward, but overall I came away having learned something about string theory, extra dimensions, [...]

I thought this book, particularly when compared to, say, Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe, continually fell short of its ambitions. It's prose is only adequate and often misestimates the lay reader's level of understanding. I also found it annoying for its frequent injection of self-promotion. I can well understand that Randall might have much to say about being female and a physicist, but there is a kind of thinly-hidden effort to impress us as a kind of uber-babe, a rock climbing, equation [...]

One of the most boring and incoherent popular science book I've ever read. I had great expectations when I started reading it, but it turns out the book is full of useless analogies and the narrative is overall inconsistent. There are a lot of material which is unrelated or appears twice. Also some theories, related to the topic were not covered at all. In comparison with unparalleled "The Cosmic Landscape" book, I had a really bad experience reading the current one. I gave it one additional sta [...]

I know I won't be able to truly understand quantum mechanics and particle physics until I sit down and learn the math somehowbut I thought Lisa Randall did an amazing job trying. I caught glimpses of our invisible world of virtual particles, gluons, squarks, 5th dimensions and branes.My world has been rocked. Nuff said.

It took me a while to read this volume because as I was trying to get from the tenth dimension to the eleventh, there were particles floating around in my Brane and, as I tried to string them together to make sense out of them, I hit Dark Matter and fell into a Black Hole. Now I am awaiting the validation of the Higgs boson (the so-called "god" Particle), which I believe is the only thing that will save me from the mess in which I find myself.Seriously, I am a novice physics junkie, who understa [...]

This is on the list of Brian Greene's "Suggestions for Further Reading" in "The Hidden Reality". As I may have stated elsewhere, my goal is to read that B. Greene list so I chose to re-read "Warped Passages".This book is not an easy read. It leads up to an explanation of RS1 and RS2, two papers written by Randal and Sundrum describing a theory to solve the Hierarchical Problem. There is a lot of material to cover to even understand what the Hierarchical Problem is and why it is such a big proble [...]

Warped passages is one of those valuable books where a leading physicist explains her work to the rest of us. In Dr. Randall's case, the mold breaking concept of exploiting extra dimensions, from string theory, to provide solutions to long standing fundamental problems in particle physics. She explains her way to her ground breaking work on developing the Randall-Sundrum and Karch-Randall models for the universe. She describes the exciting possibility of the LHC providing evidence for any of the [...]

I noticed that many people gave bad review to this book, personally I think it wouldn't be a book for beginners to read, it's more difficult than popular science book, requires at least a little bit basic physic concepts or ideas. There are many details in this book, I am not that professional to judge if there are any mistakes (like some other people claimed), still I think Randall has a rather female touch of writing style (luckily), not totally dry and rigid. Personally I find it understandab [...]

I thought this book was written pretty well, though still a bit over my head in spots. I commend Physicists that can put all those mathematical equations and abstract thinking into writing. She does a good job conveying concepts like higher dimensions, string theory, branes, and symmetry into language for non-physicists like myself. This was written over 10 years ago, so I'm sure many advances have been made since then. It's still interesting hearing about the process in discovering these mind-b [...]